


downtown love

by interim



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Recreational Drug Use, explicit for brief sex scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:30:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6909382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interim/pseuds/interim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>if real life hit her, she wouldn't know what it was. <br/>alex, eliza, and it was fun, but i could never be the one for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	downtown love

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled: chance, gerald, and the great comet of 1812.   
> explicit tag for brief sex scenes and drug use, probably. work with me. this is another mediocre fic.   
> blame iaintinapatientphase.

“So, what is the word tonight, Alex? A girl or a guy?”

Lafayette claps his hands on Alex’s shoulders, and Alex just laughs, nearly bashful. The party in this cramped apartment is way too loud and filled with smoke from cigarettes and joints, and he can really only see the five people directly in front of them, but he leans up on his toes to try to scan the room. 

“Girl most likely. All of these guys look straight.” In Alex’s humble experience, parties smoking this much weed tend to attract more straight guys. Maybe if there were a little more blow, he could find a cute college guy to take home, but it looks slim. Girls who smoke tend to be a little wilder anyway, so he’ll take his chances. 

Still, his choices are slim. The room is half filled with blonde college girls who will smoke but can’t hold their liquor. Not really his type. He’ll leave them to the straight guys in their khakis and polo shirts. Across the room, he sees a black haired, black eyed beauty against a wall with a cheap beer in her hand, mostly full. She has a soft face that Alex wishes he could meet in the daylight. Her look is only hardened by winged eyeliner and a dark lipstick. She looks too young to be here, but holds herself like she’s ran like this for years beyond his. God, he wants her. 

“D’you see that girl in the corner?” he shouts in Laf’s ear. Lafayette follows his pointing finger to the girl, and his face brightens. 

“Eliza Schuyler!” he tells him. “I know her sisters well. I will introduce the two of you.”

The fact that Laf knows her family is probably already breaking Alex’s “no more rich heiresses” rule. Too plain and boring and usually only into him because he’s not white and it looks to piss off her parents. Either way, Lafayette drags Alex across the tiny room to Eliza. Alex can’t help but trace his eyes along her body when he reaches her, and he knows she can tell. He thinks she likes it. 

“Hi, G,” she says, appearing genuinely happy to see him and giving him a quick side hug. 

“It’s been awhile. Eliza, you must meet Alexander.”

“Just Alex is fine,” he clarifies. She looks at him carefully like she’s ready to swallow him whole. 

“Alexander,” she repeats anyway. He almost crumbles at the way his name falls out of her mouth and hopes she never calls him anything else. “I’m Eliza.”

Alex closes the gap between them and doesn’t even notice that Lafayette has slipped back into the crowd. He leans himself closer to her by pressing his hand against the wall behind her back. 

“You’re too cute to be at a party like this,” he tells her, making her laugh and look away from him.

“Fine. Let’s leave. Wanna come back to my place?” Her eyes are wide and inviting. Alex would follow her anywhere. He takes her hand and they push their way to the door.

On the walk to her apartment, which she swears isn’t too far, but it takes almost a half hour, is where they get to know each other past first names. Alexander Hamilton, 24. Eliza Schuyler, 22. No family. Two sisters. Columbia, undergrad and law school. Sarah Lawrence, Art History. Alex scoffs and tells her, with all his Columbia learned elitism, exactly how useful of a degree that is. She smiles and leans against his side, telling him that that’s sort of the point. 

He doesn’t really understand what that means until they reach her neighborhood. Clean, sky-high buildings with empty streets. A doorman walks them to the elevator. She unlocks the door to an apartment inappropriately large for an art history graduate. It’s littered with empty bottles, dirty clothes, shoes, shopping bags. The credit cards on her coffee table all say  _ Philip Schuyler _ . He laughs to himself. Rebel rich girl doing drugs and spending cash to piss off her parents. He should be disgusted; these are the people he grew up hating. But he watches her kick her two thousand dollar shoes off into a corner in her apartment and all he wants is to kiss her. 

So he does.

Eliza responds quick, hands running through his hair then down his back. She gets him up against a wall, fitting her hips against his and grinding down on him. He growls and she relishes in it. 

“You're not messing around,” Alex remarks. She shuts him up with another kiss. 

He takes the hint, his hands finding her hips and pushing her shirt up and up so he can reach around and unclasp her bra. He doesn't bother taking either off in full, just rucks them up to her collarbone so he can lavish her breasts with his hands in full view. She lets out the smallest noise in pleasure, and a small smirk, full of pride, emerges on his face. When the friction between their hips becomes too much for the both of them, Alex pushes her back onto her bed gently. She takes the opportunity to strip off her top as she watches him try to wrestle off her too tight skinny jeans. She should've worn a skirt. Once he can get them past her knees, she takes over, kicking them off and onto the floor sans ceremony. Eliza beckons for him to come closer, pulling off his shirt when he does. He laughs, pressing down on her, skin to skin, and she tries to undo his jeans with limited space between them. She brushes her hand against his cock as she finally gets them off and he groans against her cheek. His jeans join hers on the floor. Alex’s mouth is on her breasts, his fingers sinking into the skin on her hips. It's going to bruise. Eliza stretches her arms above her head, just focusing on the pleasure. 

His hand slips underneath the top of her panties, teasing her clit with his middle finger. Eliza’s hips chase after the touch, moving her whole body down to get closer to him. Alex slots his leg between hers so she has something to satiate her need for friction while he works her up with his fingers on her clit. The sensation of her rocking her body against his thigh is too much and not enough for him at the same time. He pulls his hand back up to her hips, gripping onto her tight so he can flip them over and move her up. She mourns the loss of the attention from his fingers, but the sounds he makes once she starts to roll her hips against his cock, only a thin layer of cotton and lace between them, more than make up for it. 

Eliza leans down over him when his eyes close, kissing up his neck to whisper in his ear: “Alexander, you can’t come when you haven’t even fucked me yet.” He opens her eyes to see her smirking over him. She’s teasing him. 

“Get rid of these then,” he shoots back, his fingers looping around the hem of her panties and pulling them down. She grabs his wrist, nodding towards her bedside table. 

“Condom.”

“What, no birth control?”

“STDs,” she crosses her arms. “I don't know where you’ve been.”

He groans, leaning over and rooting through the drawer. Candy wrappers, pills, mini bottles of tequila, something he assumes is cocaine, and ah, condoms in the back. Alex wants to laugh. This girl has the seven deadly sins tucked away in her nightstand. 

“Thank you,” she says, leaning in to nibble on his ear as if to imply that she will be  _ especially  _ grateful later. He is obsessed with her, hand on the back of her neck as he pushes into her. 

He’s mumbling nonsensically into her neck as she rocks her hips against his. His hands fly between her waist and breasts and thighs, wanting every part of her. Her gasps fill the room, and she presses harder down onto his shoulders with her hands, trying to keep herself steady as he bucks his hips back into hers. 

Biting kisses into the flesh on her neck. Fingernails digging into his back. He flips them over again, hitching up her leg and sinking in deeper. Eliza chants  _ there, right there _ into his ear until she comes, pulsing tight around his cock and her chest pressed flush against his, and he follows quickly after. 

***

He falls asleep with his head snuggled on her stomach, just below her breasts, and his weight pressing down on her hips. She drags a blanket up over his back with her feet and scrolls through her phone while she waits for him to wake up. The few bumps she did before she went to that party are sticking with her, keeping her heart pumping fast (though she could credit some of that to Alexander). Eliza couldn’t fall asleep if she wanted to, but she doesn’t want to. She tosses her phone down on the bed and diverts all her attention to the sleeping man in front of her. She wonders momentarily that he’s pretending to sleep, only lying in wait for her to fall asleep and escape out the window. But as she watches him yawn noisily, a drop of drool falling onto her stomach, she knows he’s knocked out. No decent man would consciously drool on a girl he just slept with.

Hours pass; she doesn't know how many. Eliza likes watching him sleep. She finally gets a good, clean look at his face with the blue light from the near dawn illuminating it. The party before was too dark and little attention was paid to faces in the hours following. His features are overdone, but he’s attractive, she decides. Big eyes, even under closed lids, that a girl could swoon over. His facial hair has been scratching her skin all fucking night, yet she can’t picture him without it. It can stay. She knows how soft his lips are. She reaches down to run her hands through his hair, sifting through, then down to his spine. The fact that his vertebrae were sticking out with the way he was lying would freak her out under normal circumstances. But in the haze of the sleeplessness and the early morning, she runs her fingers along either side of his spine, counting them as she goes down until she can’t reach anymore. She skates them back up his skin, and he shudders under her touch. He slowly blinks awake, yet again his fucking beard scratching her stomach as he turns to look up at her through half-lidded eyes. 

“G’morning,” he mumbles. Eliza untangles their legs so he can roll off her, letting out a sigh of relief when he does. She squeezes her thigh, waiting for her muscles to wake up too. 

“You’re too heavy to fall asleep on top of me,” she tells him. “And you drool.”

Alex is still half-asleep, so he just nods and lets out a grunt of acknowledgement. 

Whatever. Without him on top of her, she has enough freedom of movement to hang off her bed and dig through her purse to find a joint she’s been chasing all night. The sound of the lighter sparking and the smell seem to wake Alex up more, suddenly pawing at her hip.

“Wanna share?” he asks, looking so sweet and agreeable. Eliza feels a smile at the corners of her mouth and hands him the joint. 

“Yeah. I’m probably too hopped up for all of it anyway.”

He looks up at her, both confused and impressed. “When the fuck did you get high?”

“Coke, before the party,” she answers. “It’s keeping me up.”

Her phone buzzes and Alex glances at the screen, full of unanswered texts. 

_ Philip Schuyler _ ,  _ 30m ago _ : Eliza, call your mother this morning. She hasn’t heard from you in a bit.

_ Philip Schuyler, 25m ago _ : + The rent check is in the mail.

_ Peggy Schuyler, 8m ago _ : G told me you went home with some law student from a party last night? Babe!!! I thought you told Angelica you would stop doing this.

_ Angelica Schuyler, now _ : Don’t forget about lunch today. The three of us need to catch up. 

Eliza picks up the phone and laughs lightly at the messages before setting it back down, allowing Alex to look at it again. 

“So you told Angelica you would stop doing this?” he prods. “What’s ‘this?’ Me?”

“You’re being intrusive,” she says, but he doesn’t back down. Eliza shrugs, trying to keep it nonchalant. She really doesn’t want to get into this with the guy she just slept with or the guy who’s holding her last joint. “But no, not you specifically. The idea of you as a random stranger who fucked her little sister.” His face drops at that. “Don’t worry. I like you. Specifically and the idea of you.”

He smiles; she’s unsure if it's genuine or cocky. “You like me?” Pride is a sin. Eliza wants to roll her eyes, but she takes the joint from him and takes a hit before stubbing it out. Yes, she likes him. She straddles his lap and starts kissing down his chest, past his hips, his moans soon filling her ears.

 

***

_ Eliza, 10m ago _ : You up?

_ Alexander _ ,  _ 6m ago _ : yeah why

_ Eliza, 2m ago _ : Can’t sleep. Meet me at the party near Lafayette’s place?

_ Alexander, now _ : on my way.

 

Eliza is already at the party, at least three drinks deep, according to the Instagram Alex sees in the cab ride over. It looks to be a fake candid, with Eliza’s head perfectly thrown back in a laugh, her dress, with slits up the side and a neckline such that she’s really only covered by the bandeau underneath. The more she drinks, he’s learned, the more conceited she becomes. His beautiful, outgoing, alcoholic socialite. 

She’s surrounded by a couple guys when he arrives, all purring to her about how pretty she is, how they just want to party. She’s giddy, drunker on the attention than the fruity vodka drink in her glass, not even noticing as one of them starts to slide their hand up her thigh. Alex swoops in, sitting down in between them. He knows, he knows the two of them aren’t “exclusive” or “official” or anything. They’ve only known each other a few weeks, but like he said: she’s  _ his _ socialite.

“Alexander,” she grins, hands finding his chin and pulling him in for a kiss. He wants to melt at the way she says his name, the feel of her lips. The boys formerly at her feet dissipate, but she can hardly tell. “What took you so long?”

“I think those drinks are distorting time for you,” he says, taking her drink from her hand and finishing it for you. “I’ll catch up.”

For awhile, they stay like that. She drapes her legs over his as they both drink, talking about nothing and laughing at nothing. Until Eliza says she’s bored of drinking and starts to search for a real party, flipping through her contacts, most of which Alex is sure are under fake names. 

“What are you in the mood for?” she asks him, but he can already see she’s texting someone about a few grams of cocaine. 

“Whatever you want,” he tells her. Maybe it’s because he mainly did drugs in college or he has no money and only smokes weed, but he doesn’t understand her penchant for cocaine. Maybe it’s a rich thing. Wolf of Wall Street and all that. 

But he indulges her. He follows her across town to the apartment of her college friend, undoubtedly another rich kid with too much money and time on his hands. It’s awkward for Alex to be in this part of town, it’s awkward for Rich Kid to let someone like Alex into his home. The only person at ease is Eliza, though that might be in thanks to the pink drinks she couldn’t put down at the party She greets Rich Kid with a kiss on the cheek, trades him a few bills for a baggie of her white powder. 

“Mind if we stay here? I don’t wanna go across town with this on me,” she announces, to either Alex or Rich Kid. Maybe to both. They both shrug, indifferent. 

She sits down in the kitchen with Alex. Instead of a kitchen table, Rich Kid has some modern art piece in his breakfast nook with chairs surrounding it. Alex thinks it pretentious; Eliza is pissed at its many ridges. 

She pours out the baggie onto her cell phone screen instead, and Alex leans in, his chest over folded arms. She chops her lines even as her phone vibrates with notifications. A text from her sister. Neat little rows. New instagram follow. She rolls up a dollar bill. CNN Breaking News: Taiwan elects first female president. One, two, three lines, and she’s wiping off residue with a baby wipe. 

That precise moment, Alex is in love with her. 

***

“You don't look like a Schuyler.”

Her eyes narrow. It’s the second time they’ve had sex this week, a series of inappropriate texts leading to an afternoon fuck; her chest is still heaving against his when he says it. They’ve been doing this for a couple months now, the sex followed by him prodding into her life and telling her too much about his, but sometimes he still catches her off-guard. It takes her a moment to catch up to what he’s saying, but seconds to get angry, defensive. 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You don't look Dutch,” he continues. There's a question buzzing in the back of his mind, but he can't say it outright. 

“You don't look Scottish,” she counters.

“Well, I am the ‘creole bastard.’”

That makes her laugh. The way his face turns up in a sneer when he says it, the way he’s offering up so much of himself to this girl he barely knows, the way he expects the same from her. 

“I’m adopted,” she tells him after a minute, feeling more exposed than she did lying naked below him. “It's no big deal, I’m 22, you know? Both my sisters are too, but it's different, I don't know. I’m the only… imported one.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Are you a law student or a psych student?”

“So that's a yes.” 

“You don't need to be so smart all the time.”

He gives her a look. He’s not conceding. 

“I don't wanna talk about this. I’m not avoiding anything, it’s really not a big deal.” She gets out of bed and digs around her floor for something to wear. New dress out of a Dolce & Gabbana bag. Eliza rips off the tag and throws it on the floor, sliding the dress up her body and pulling on underwear after. Alex grips the sheets (anger? jealousy? resentment?) when he glances at the price tag on the floor. 

“Where are you going?” he asks. They're not done here. 

“Nowhere,” she says. “I just thought if I got dressed, you’d lose interest in me and this conversation.” She sits down at her vanity, touching up her makeup and tousling her hair with her fingers until she reaches some undefined satisfaction with the way she looks. 

“I’m not that shallow,” he argues, pulling on his boxers and moving to stand behind her. He rests his hands on her shoulders, rubbing the base of her neck with his thumbs, and looks at her reflection. “I’m very interested in you, clothes or no clothes.” 

Eliza turns around in the chair, leaning up to kiss him quickly. “You’re sweet. It’s things like that that  _ do _ make me want to take my clothes off.”

“So I should be saying more sweet things?”

“Always.”

He cups her face in his hands, kissing her still, until Eliza realizes he’s trying to coax her out of the chair and back onto her bed. She presses a hand on his chest and pushes him back gently. “Hey. Stop,” chewing on her lip a moment before continuing. “You know, I do actually have somewhere to go tonight. My dad’s reelection donor party. You wanna come? It could be boring, but there’s free cocktails.”

His eyes light up. If he can’t learn about Eliza from Eliza, maybe he can needle her family. Her sisters (what were their names again?) will be there, she says. Black tie optional. I’ll pick you up at six. 

***

Alex options out of the black tie, and she picks him up at six. Or, the car she sent picks him up at six. Alex receives a text about quarter before saying she was running a little bit late and would meet him there. “A little bit late” turns out to be over an hour. Alex tries wasting time in the lobby, scrolling mindlessly through his phone and making sure no one is looking at him suspiciously. His suit costs a thousand dollars less than the watch on the wrist of any other man at this event. He catches two girls looking at him across the room, whispering excitedly to each other. Alex wants to ignore it, but soon enough they’re crowding him. 

“Are you Alexander?” the younger one asks, before looking up at the older. Alex nods stupidly, confused and a little afraid. 

The older girl smiles, cheeks straining. “My name is Angelica Schuyler.”

Alex breathes in sharply. Eliza’s sisters. “Alex Hamilton. No one calls me Alexander except Eliza. And Lafayette, but that’s because he’s French.”

The younger girl’s face lights up. “Oh, yeah! Didn’t G introduce you and Eliza?”

Alex is far more inclined to talk about Lafayette and Eliza with this sister (Oh! Peggy! Her name is Peggy!), but Angelica cuts in, pressing. 

“Hamilton? Where’s your family from?”

“Unimportant, isn’t it?” he responds, skirting the question. Angelica scoffs, yet lets Peggy drag him off to the bar, talking about Lafayette and summers in Spain. Just as he wanted, he learns little tidbits about Eliza that Peggy throws out like they’re nothing, but Alex clings to. When she was fourteen, she dyed her hair pink to try to make their parents angry, but they only thought it was an act of breast cancer awareness, commended her, then made a donation to Susan G. Komen. The rebel thing started young, then. Though, cocaine and an art history degree are a few notches higher than hair dye. He thinks he understands what she meant when she told him being adopted was  _ different _ for Peggy and Angelica when he sees their father. He shares the same dark skin as them; Eliza would stand out.  

It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the three sisters. When Eliza finally arrives, Angelica and Peggy rush to her, picking up her hands and kissing her cheeks. Peggy points over to Alexander with an excited smile upon her face, and Eliza eyes follow her finger. Her  _ eyes _ . They’re dark, but he can still see her pupils are blown wide. So that’s what “a little bit late” looks like. Alex is unable to approach her, Peggy is sent back to occupy him while Angelica talks sternly to her sister. 

“What is she saying to her?” he asks, hoping Peggy has some sort of telepathy with her sisters. 

“The usual: ‘are you high right now, stop dating boys like him, come and stay with me in D.C.’” she replies lazily, swirling her straw in her drink. She may not have telepathy, but she’s overheard this conversation a dozen times to know that it rarely changes. 

“Boys like him,” he repeats. 

Peggy slurps her straw against the ice. “It’s nothing against you personally. You seem like a cool guy, but Eliza does this… thing. She dates poor, low-life guys, brings them to family events to try to get Mom and Dad to lash out against her, even though she knows they never will.”

Poor, low-life guys. 

Alex knows that he isn’t a… well, he is poor. Not a low-life. His father was a low-life; Alex is going to be a lawyer. He fought his way to this country, finished school with nothing, is going to  _ be _ something. 

He only offers Eliza a kiss on the cheek before immersing himself in the ballroom, chatting up any senator, representative, aide, firm partner that would speak to him. Poor, low-life guy. Thank the stars, that’s not him. Even if he has to prove it to her.

He leaves the night with business cards overflowing his coat pocket, smug and full of pride. Eliza only glares at him when he’s ready to leave, clearly unhappy to spend her whole night on the sidelines with Peggy as he snaked his way around the room to his advantage. She takes the car with him back to his place, yet they sit in total silence until they stop in front of his building. 

“Do you want to come up?” he asks gently, setting his hand on her knee to gain her attention.

“Oh, now you want to pay attention to me?” she snarks. He winces. She’s definitely not happy with him. Still, she nods her head towards the door and follows him out of the car. The stairs in his building are ancient and wooden, and he lifts Eliza over the cracks. She may not care what happens to her Prada heels, but Alex does. 

His apartment is barely a third the square footage as hers, but her floors are ten times as cluttered. All of his books and papers and stacked high on any available surface, out of tripping hazard. She takes the lead, fingers around his wrist as she pulls him towards his desk and sits atop it. He kisses her once, lightly, before starting to defend himself. 

“I was just trying to show you that I wasn’t going to be a low-life like any of your other boyfriends,” he tells her. 

She sighs, tapping her nails against his shoulders. “I know, I know.” He stares at her, waiting for any hint from her face. Inscruitible. She wants more, she doesn’t care if he makes something of himself or not. She only cares that he cares about her.

“How about I make it up to you?” he offers, a wicked smile creeping up on his face. “Scoot up.”

He taps the edge on the desk, and Eliza happily complies, her legs spreading as Alex sinks down onto his knees before her. 

His hands are on her thighs, slowly pushing the material of her dress up past her hips. He kisses across her soft skin as he strokes her gently through her panties, working her up. When her soft gasps of desperation start to turn into whines, he stops his teasing, pulling her underwear off and tossing it on the floor. He nibbles at the inside of her thigh before sliding his tongue against her. Above him, he can see Eliza’s face flush a dark red. He is nothing but pleased. He swirls his tongue around her clit slowly, before devoting his whole mouth. Her muscles flex underneath his hands, and he runs his thumb across the skin, soothing. His eyes flick up to her half-closed ones. She drops him a small smile before rooting her fingers in his hair, trying to urge his face closer against her. Alex laughs, and she shudders at the sound, his hot breath. “So pushy, ‘Liza.”

“Shut up,” she breathes. He does, mouth back on her instantly. Alex amps up his theatrics, moaning against her as his tongue teases her opening, licking up everything in excess before wrapping his lips around her clit again. He sinks two fingers into her, and she bucks her hips up, her legs closing in and sliding onto his back. 

He’s twisting three fingers against her sweet spot when she comes, her thighs clamping around his ears. He feels like he’s suffocating, but he’d be happy to die like this. Eliza eventually lets go with legs still trembling, reaching down and running her thumb across his cheek with sweet, glassy eyes.

Alex exhales, cleaning off his fingers and wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist, and rests his head on her lap. 

“God, I love you,” he says. The words fall out of him before he can stop them, but the world doesn’t stop. Eliza continues carding her fingers through his hair, humming softly in delight, like she didn’t even notice.

Alex is so grateful for the lack of panic that he barely notices when she doesn’t say it back. 

***

_ Alexander, 4d ago _ : dinner tonight?

_ Alexander, 4d ago _ : is that a no?

_ Alexander, 4d ago _ : you know, your read receipts are on. 

 

_ Alexander, 3d ago _ : you up?

 

_ Alexander, 2d ago _ : i can score you some weed if you want

_ Alexander, 2d ago _ : or coke, whatever you want, baby

 

_ Alexander, 12h ago _ : lizaaa

 

_Eliza, 20m_ _ago_ : Hey, I think I left some of my stash at your place. Can you bring it over?

_ Alexander, 19m ago _ : be there in fifteen. 

 

Fourteen minutes, forty seconds later, Alex is waving to her doorman as he breezes past to the elevator. A sandwich baggie in his pocket that he’s not even sure is hers. He’s so desperate to see her, he would’ve given her flour. Her door is unlocked (as always, unless she knows her sisters are in town), and for once he’s grateful for her complete lack of regard for her safety. Her apartment seems to be in worse condition than usual, more clutter on the floor, sheets peeling off the corner of her mattress. Eliza’s on the floor next to her bed, flipping through a copy of  _ The Old Man and the Sea.  _ He never took her for Hemingway. She looks up at the sound of the door opening. Alex wants to be taken by her smile, but he can’t tear his eyes away from her bloodshot eyes. 

Eliza steps towards him; he does too, but it feels involuntary, magnetic. Soon she’s pressed up against him, kissing him sweetly while her hands drift into his back pockets. He’s leaning into it until he feels her sliding the little plastic bag out of his pockets. 

“Eliza.” 

“Alexander,” she mocks, then turns away from him to examine the bag. 

“You’re making me feel cheap, here.”

She looks back at him, head cocked to the side with a small smile on his face.  _ Come on _ . 

“Do you want me to stay, or?” The annoyance creeps into his voice, and Eliza can tell. He’s not kidding. 

“If you want. I don’t care. I’ll call you.”

Alex rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, frustrated. “Are you gonna call or are you gonna blatantly ignore my texts for a week?”

“Alexander, that’s not what I was trying─”

“And for what? All because I said I loved you?”

That. That makes her angry. Her eyes narrow and he can tell she’s biting, hard, on her lip until she can feel it. “I don’t want to hear about that.”

“What the fuck does that mean? I love you, Eliza. I want to be with you. I want to have a life with you.” 

“You barely know me, you’re being crazy.”

“Why do you get so upset whenever I try to care about you?”

“I can’t even talk about how arrogant you sound right now. Law student or psych student?”

He’s not giving up, he’s not letting her deflect, talk about his problems instead. He only presses on further. “Why don’t you want a real fucking relationship?”

“How can we be in a real relationship when you  _ don’t fucking know me _ .”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I know you,” he says. “I’ve known you for two months. You’re stuck in a rebellious phase because your parents always treated you like you were perfect. Probably because of the whole sister thing, too, right?”

Fuck him. Eliza fumes. He isn’t allowed. He isn’t allowed to say he knows her and throw something like that in her face in the same breath. Alex steps toward her, intending for it to be an extension of kindness, empathy, but Eliza just feels closed in. He’s asking too much from her. He’s going too far. She shoves her hand against his chest, pushing him back. It doesn’t stop him from talking. 

“So you smoke and drink and shop and fuck random guys to try to get them to hate you a little bit, to get them to react. That’s what all the fucking coke is for, your goddamn art history degree, that’s all…  _ I’m _ for.”

Eliza relinquishes her eyes from the ground, looking at him as his hurt and worry for her slowly shifts into anger. 

“Is that all I’m for?” he demands. The wheels are spinning in his head. Island brat ( _ creole bastard _ , he confessed to her) with no money shacking up with the beloved daughter of a wealthy senator. It’s practically larceny on his part. A success for her. 

Eliza is silent. Alex is silent too, save for the heavy, angry breathing. God, is he always this loud?

Then, laughter. Hysterical laughter. The tears from her eyes sprung out of sadness and anger, but they accompany her laughs well. Alex just stares at her, shocked and on uneven footing. Accusations thrown at her, and now she’s  _ laughing _ . She looks insane: bloodshot eyes, tear tracks creating valleys in her foundation and caking mascara down her cheek, all on a head thrown back in laughter. 

“I can’t believe,” she says through hiccuping breaths. The expression on Alex’s face is unreadable. She knows this is only funny to her. Only will ever be funny to her. However much he pretends to know her so well, he can’t understand this. Still, she wants to know if he’s angry or simply confused. “That didn’t occur to you until now. You’re supposed to be so smart, how are you so dumb? You didn’t realize that until now and now…”

She pauses, tries to take a few deep breaths.  _ Now you love me. Now I love you.  _

Now it doesn’t matter. Now he’s going to leave her. She can see it in his eyes. He still doesn’t speak, but she can imagine his voice:  _ This isn’t funny, Eliza _ . Her high is crashing.  _ You’re acting crazy, Eliza _ . He really should have gone into psychology. 

“Now what?” he asks, impatiently awaiting for the end of her sentence that has too many endings. Eliza starts to panic. Right. Now he’s going to leave her. She’s acting crazy, and he’s not a psychologist. 

“Now I need you to get out,” she commands. She’s determined to take back control.  _ He  _ is not allowed to leave  _ her _ .  “Now we’re done.”

As always, he gives her what he wants. The control returns to her. He scoffs and starts to pick up what he recognizes as his that he left on her floor. She promises him that she’ll mail him the rest. She opens the door for him, but he doesn’t move. Of course, he wants the last word in.

“I shouldn’t be surprised. You were only ever in love with attention,” he tells her, his voice stinging. Hurt? Anger? The tears rise back up in her eyes and something leaps up into her throat. She just grips the doorknob tighter. “Pray I never see your face again.”

“By the grace of God,” she spits back. For a second more, Alex lingers, like there are softer words waiting to be said, but a moment passes, and he leaves. Eliza slams the door. The frame shakes.

***

He sees her one last time, after years have passed and it’s late at night on his way home, out of the city to his husband. A near empty train car except Alex and maybe six other people. He’s mostly engrossed in his phone, but when he looks up for a moment, he recognizes those lips and can’t let go of the stare. She seems to feel his presence, looking up and back at him, the same nostalgic shock washing over her. His Eliza. Or, what used to be his Eliza. It’s definitely not the same girl that slammed the door in his face all those years before. Her hair has been shorn into a long black bob brushing her shoulders and a turtleneck covers her fully. Her eyes aren’t red around the edges like the last time he saw her. She looks well rested, finally. 

An extravagant diamond weighs her ring finger down, and Alex chokes. Of course, she’s married, of course, it’s been ten years, of course, she’s perfect, who wouldn’t marry her? He wonders if she has kids, or if she didn’t want to risk them feeling like she did. He would pause on that longer if he didn’t see her looking at his ring, too. Why does it hurt this much?

He wants so much from her, like he always did. He wants to sit down next to ask her how she is, where she’s been, does her husband love her like he did? Is she clean or does she just have a better concealer now? He wants to tell him about his husband, his daughters, how John wanted to adopt another baby so Francie could have a little brother or sister, but Alex almost lunged at him when he suggested adopting from Asia. They adopted a little girl from Atlanta. He wants to know every second of her life that she could’ve spent with him, and the same for her. He wants to tell her the softer words that froze on his tongue the last time he saw her.

Yet he doesn’t open his mouth or look at her for more than a minute before he turns back to his phone and she refocuses her eyes on the scenery whipping past. His hesitance suffocates him.

All comes to an end when Eliza gets off a few stops ahead of him, casting him a last glance that looks something like regret and gratitude. The doors close with a hiss and Alex breathes out heavy. The train speeds away and he is satisfied in the irony that in their last moments together, he is the one who can’t reach out to her. 


End file.
